How to use Raycast MMD MME Shader Effect

How do I use Raycast? Where can I download the latest version of the Raycast effect?

Friend: HAVE YOU SEEN THE AMAZING MMD RAYCAST VIDEOS??? THAT SHADER IS SO COOL, RIGHT???

You: “Yea, but its so complicated I won’t be able to use it” :<

Hey, don’t worry. I know how to use Raycast
… I came to help

A Quick Glimpse of Raycast

So all ya have to know is 945+6854=Raycast

Just joking! Raycast is a powerful and sophisticated, complicated effect… but ya just need to know the basics to get started!

For this demo, I’m gonna use the new raycast 1.3.0 … a 47Mb download!
(When you follow that link, on the right is the Download button… and on the left is a drop-down that let’s you choose from all of the older versions… “Branch 1.3.0″… you will want the 1.3.0 or the 1.2.0… experiment to see which works the best on your system.)EDITOR’S NOTE: I found that the version 1.3.0 worked well for me.

SO, OK… FIRST THINGS FIRST…

Now open MME>Effect Mapping and let’s apply the shader to the model; go to the “Raycast/Main” folder and load main.fx

If you’re using the new Raycast 1.3 it should look like this:

with old Raycast 1.2, it should look like this:

When you load the main.fx it will look horrible!… and that’s why we MUST load ray.x in the main Raycast folder.

EDITOR’S NOTE: When I loaded ray.x, MMD seemed to lock-up because my system took a long time to open/process that file… and when it DID come back, the stage was SOLID Black. Go ahead to the next step and load a Skybox model to get your stage back.

NOW THAT LOOKS BEAUTIFUL

… but there are some weird spots!

AH… WE NEED A SKYBOX…

Load a skybox as a model file from the Skybox folder inside your Raycast folder…

Loading the Skybox gets rid of all of those weird spots we saw in that image, above.

GREAT… now load a background image or your favorite skydome and probably hide the coordinate-axis.

You can go to MME Effect Mapping and use Hide/Show to hide the Skybox. (If you use the Display checkbox to hide your Skybox, all of those weird spots will be back! … so use the Effect Mapping Hide/Show button, instead.)

BEAUTIFUL… LOOKS GORGEOUS!

OK… now we will make it even more beautiful

by loading the ray controller.pmx model.

When we load the controller we suddenly have control of allot of settings and effects!

This is the brow facials list…

these are the settings for my picture…
– BloomThreshold 0.45
– BloomIntensity- 0.40″

There is kind of a cheap-lens effect and a color-shift effect and using BloomThreshold we will make everything very pretty.

… but it is a little dark from the other sides!

Well, then, let’s load some lighting!

Load the DirectionalLight.pmx model.

LED.pmx does not work that easily and I don’t know how to make it work but I messaged the creator of Raycast and he said

“first, you need to download the (MMBG, avisynth) and install , then convert your avi to avs ,and loading the avs file into MMD… finally, put a Extension/DummyScreen.x and LED.pmx into MMD… MMBGAviSynth“

… but, anyways…

You can change the position and swivel the light direction of the DirectionalLight using the XYZ rollers. Swivel the light to shine on the front, back or side of your model.

… and change the quality of the light with the facial sliders.

In my image, I loaded the DirectionalLight model three times so I could add light where I wanted it on my model!

On back light I like to make it a little blue and in “other” facials use “intensivity-”

… and little bit of light manipulation…

You can easily hide the lights model by going to MME and click “Hide/Show” in MME tabs Main, MaterialMap, Depthmap, PSSM.

The arrows show from what positions my lighting is coming as I lit her with the three DirectionalLighting models.

NOW ITS TIME FOR THE MATERIALS…

You can go to MME/MaterialMap and apply the effect to your model.

I will show you how they look when applied in the image, below.

*it’s a new version of Raycast, though, so there will be more materials and they will look better*

Do you mean “nothing is happening” like MMD seems to lock-up… and so you close the program? … My computer is an old DELL running Windows XP Pro SP3… and I CAN get some features of Raycast to work for me… and several times in the process, MMD “seems” to lock-up… and I have waited, like, over 5 minutes for it to “come back”… but it DOES come back. RAYCAST is actually written for use on 64-bit systems; mine is an old 32-bit system.

Beyond that, I have no help for you. You will just have to experiment to see what works… if “nothing”… then, that’s how it is.

Everything is right there… That Controller uses the facial sliders for all that it can do. Those other folders in the RAYCAST folder contain the other tools you need… like the LIGHTS folder… many types of lights are in there…. and they each use their own facial sliders as controls. … It’s a complicated effect with many things to figure out.

Please help me:(..
I have been using raycast without problems but now..ugh..
there is one part on my video which looks like this http://imgur.com/a/Fqinc
That problem lasts about 200-300 frames then it just disappeares. I wonder why? :(

Do you load ray.x before or after applying main.fx to a model? Does MMD freeze after loading permanently, freeze for a short while and then continues to run with no visible changes, or doesn’t react at all? If you have a stage that covers the background and/or “background->black background” menu setting turned on, remove both and see if loading ray.x alone turns the background from white to black.

Gary, I, too, have a long pause where MMD seems to lock-up… several minutes… six or ten minutes?… but after waiting so long that I give-up, my system recovers and the effect works. I am running an old Dell XP Pro SP3 system, Intel Pentium duo-core 3.40GHz processor, with an ATI Radeon HD 4650 graphics card… and it gets the job done. The Raycast effect is computer-intensive!… you may just have to “wait” while your system does the math… or, maybe, the effect will not run on your machine.

First, set R+, G+, and B+ sliders to some non-zero value (you will see model’s lightning change immediately if you look at her *back*). You may also change light’s intensity with Intensity+ and Intensity- sliders, but until you set up color sliders, it won’t work. Then use DirectionalLight’s *bones* to change light’s direction. The simplest way is to rotate the light with motherbone’s angle controls, hiding the model itself where it wouldn’t be seen, but using other bones you can have more complex and nice lightning.

Hi! I just wanted to ask a fast question. Perhaps I missed it, I read this article a few times to double check, but I tried following this when I was first learning to use Raycast and it kind of threw me off because the lighting files felt really convoluted.

I went back to it and used the tutorial that came with Raycast, and found out that I should have been going to the EnvLight tab and changing the effect on the skybox to “/Skyboxname/skylighting_hrd.fx”. I found that it instantly made everything look very good and lit up.

With the context out of the way, was there a particular reason for leaving that out? I greatly apologize if I somehow missed it!

1) turn off “display ground shadow” option and only use the “real” shadow engine, 2) only use .pmd/.pmx based stages and not .x based ones. ATM I haven’t found a way for real shadows to work on .x accessories with ray on, but I’ll keep looking.

Well, the article I mentioned describes that. Basically, “real” shadows is what is turned on when you turn off “ground shadows” option, which produces a bit more smooth contour (and is faster to render), but has very limited functionality. Normally, you have to switch “shadow” for every visible .x accessory in Accessory Manipulation Panel to make it work on them… unfortunately, Rayshader overrides that, so you better limit yourself to .pmd stages (you can convert .x stages to .pmd using PMDE, though). Just try to use the LearnMMD stage with Ray and you’ll see that it works.

I also found that if you manually set same .fx scripts on the accessory in MME panel’s MaterialMap and DepthMap tabs that are loaded by default on the main model, it produces sort of a shadow as well, but compared to shadows on .pmd models, it’s rather bleak.